Shohei Ohtani has been a mild disappointment as a hitter this season, but he's been an absolute revelation as a pitcher, putting up a 1.79 ERA and playing his way into dual MVP and Cy Young consideration. But that latter goal is going to go on the back burner for a while, and at this point, it's not clear when we're going to see him back on the mound.
"I would say that it's going to be some time," is how manager Dave Roberts said it when announcing that Ohtani would not make his first scheduled start coming out of the All-Star break due to lingering knee soreness. Roberts added that "it's not going to be a day-to-day thing," though it won't keep him from hitting. The issue is in his left knee – the leg he lands on when he pitches – and despite having his final start before the break scratched and receiving a lubricating shot in the knee during the break, Ohtani will miss at least one more start.
But it seems likely to be more. Partially, that's the nature of life on the Dodgers. Even with Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow on the IL, the Dodgers have enough off days over the next three weeks to keep their starters on an every-sixth-day cadence while only using five. By that point, Snell might be back, and with an 11.5-game lead in the NL West, the need to push Ohtani through the injury just isn't especially great.
But it's also because the Dodgers will never want to push Ohtani, specifically. They have the luxury of treating the regular season with lower stakes than most teams because they're playing for October and October only, but even if they were feeling the crunch of a pennant race, you have to think they would still take the most cautious route possible with Ohtani. He's always going to be at a higher risk of injury than most players due to his two-way nature, and having to manage that comes with the territory.
For those of you with Ohtani on your team, you'll only be able to use him as a hitter for at least the next week, and possibly even longer. And he's still obviously a must-start option, even if he looks like a long shot to get to 50 homers for the third season in a row – with 22, getting to his fourth straight 40-homer season might be asking a lot. And you shouldn't expect to see him stealing any bases for the foreseeable future, so the ceiling is just lower here than you might have thought.
But you'd also obviously prefer the Dodgers keep playing it safe as long as it means he can stay in the batter's box. As incredible as it is to watch Ohtani dominate as a hitter and pitcher, it's better for him to do one skill than neither. It's a bummer to see Ohtani limited in any way, but hopefully it's not for long.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:
Week 18 sleeper hitters
Best hitter matchups for Week 18
1. Tigers @CHC3, KC4
2. Diamondbacks ATH3, @STL1, @WAS3
3. Nationals @COL3, ARI3
4. Athletics @ARI3, @MIN3
5. Marlins @HOU3, SD3
Worst hitter matchups for Week 18
1. Mets @MIL3, LAD3
2. Dodgers @PHI3, @NYM3
3. Red Sox BAL3, TOR3
4. Mariners CIN3, @TEX3
5. Blue Jays TB4, @BOS3
Top sleeper hitters for Week 18
- Curtis Mead, 3B, Nationals (75%) @COL3, ARI3
- J.J. Bleday, OF, Reds (66%) @SEA3, @STL3
- Heriberto Hernandez, OF, Marlins (18%) @HOU3, SD3
- Royce Lewis, 3B, Twins (59%) @CLE4, ATH3
- Gabriel Moreno, C, Diamondbacks (78%) ATH3, @STL1, @WAS3
Week 18 sleeper pitchers
You can check out Scott's two-start pitcher rankings here, too. He ranks every projected two-start pitcher for the upcoming week, tiering them from must-starts to no-thanks.
Top sleeper pitchers for Week 18
- Emmet Sheehan, Dodgers (79%) at PHI, at NYM
- Jack Flaherty, Tigers (60%) at CHC, vs. KC
- Ian Seymour, Rays (79%) at TOR
- Reynaldo Lopez, Braves (47%) vs. SD, at BAL
- Michael McGreevy, Cardinals (68%) at LAA
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from this weekend's action:
Week 18 waiver targets
- C: Ryan Jeffers, Twins (73%)
- 1B: Bryce Eldridge, Giants (71%)
- 2B: Cole Young, Mariners (43%)
- 3B: Kyle Karros, Rockies (54%)
- SS: Cooper Pratt, Brewers (32%)
- OF: Luis Robert, Mets (68%), Heriberto Hernandez, Marlins (20%), Steven Kwan, Guardians (55%), Jake Mangum, Pirates (26%)
- SP: Jared Jones, Pirates (75%), Cade Cavalli, Nationals (77%), Peter Lambert, Astros (77%), Roki Sasaki, Dodgers (57%)
- RP: Grant Taylor, White Sox (46%), Luke Weaver, Mets (26%)
For more deep-league targets, plus my thoughts on each of those players and more, head here.
Three Up, Three Down
Three big performances that have players trending up, and three that have the arrow pointing in the opposite direction.
Three Up
Drake Baldwin needed a big weekend and he got it
When Baldwin went on the IL in late May, he was arguably one of the most valuable players in Fantasy. He had played every single game for the Braves, either hitting first or second, putting up a .303/.389/.543 line with a 40-homer, 128-RBI, 132-run pace – and I did double check those numbers to make sure, because they are kind of unbelievable. And, well, it did prove to be too good to be true, as he returned from the oblique injury after four weeks and looked like a shell of himself, hitting .154/.252/.220 over the next four or so weeks. It was rough, with his strikeout rate jumping to 26% and Baldwin generally looking like either a fluke or someone whose season was wrecked by an oblique injury – or both! Either way, he went from looking like maybe the best catcher in baseball to someone we had real concerns about. But he did a lot to put those concerns to rest this weekend, opening the second half with a 3-for-4 game with a homer and five RBI and finishing the three games with 10 hits, three homers, eight RBI, and even a steal. It was a performance we badly wanted to see from Baldwin, and hopefully it proves his post-injury slump was just that. He still has a pretty massive .386 xwOBA for the season – better than any other catcher in baseball, even Ben Rice – and still looks like a candidate to finish the season as the top catcher for 2027.
Trevor Rogers is back?
Usually, the biggest headaches for Fantasy are pitchers with good stuff and poor command, the types of pitchers who flash tantalizing upside but frustrate with their inability to find any semblance of consistency – more about Gavin Williams later in the newsletter. But Rogers is kind of the opposite. Even when he's good, it's never quite clear how he's doing it. His stuff is pretty good, but not so good that it seems like he should be one of the best pitchers in baseball, which makes his struggles somehow more understandable than the flamethrowing types. But Rogers is just as frustrating and impossible to predict than anyone, having put together an eight-start stretch after this weekend with a 1.69 ERA. Prior to that start, he had a 6.84 ERA in his first 10 starts of the season, and it's not like there's been a huge change in the underlying skill set. In his first 10 starts, he had a 17.3% strikeout rate and 8.2% walk rate. He followed up with a 21% strikeout rate and 7.4% walk rate in his last eight starts. There's a difference there, but is it big enough to explain why Rogers goes from unusable to a seeming ace overnight? And it's a similar trick to the one he pulled off last season, albeit with more walks and fewer strikeouts, generally. If it sounds like I don't quite know what to do with Rogers, you're right! I think he's probably more likely to have an ERA near 4.00 than 2.00, but with the way his past two seasons have gone, I can't say that with any degree of confidence. I can't really say anything with a high degree of confidence.
Austin Riley had a huge weekend
We had a few other hitters who put up truly huge performances this weekend, but I don't know if any of them needed it more than Riley. Once one of the most feared and consistent power hitters in baseball, Riley hit one-quarter of his total homers for the season with his three-homer performance across three games. Overall, he went 6 for 13 across the weekend with just his second multi-homer game of the season Sunday, and he suddenly looks like he's having a pretty good July, with an .864 OPS; before that, it was just .606, which was actually his second-best month of the season, believe it or not. I still have a lot of doubts about Riley's bat, as his strikeout rate has moved in the wrong direction at the same time that his expected wOBA on contact (a measure of how productive a player should be when they put the ball in play) has trended in the wrong direction for the third straight season. It'll take more than one good weekend to get rid of these doubts. But we'll take all the good weekends we can get from him, too.
Three Down
Hunter Brown isn't himself
He just isn't right. This can happen sometimes when pitchers come back from injuries – they might be healthy enough, but something just isn't right. We saw it with George Kirby last season, and Brown just continues to struggle to find himself, this time walking six over just 4.2 innings, allowing four earned runs. The stuff still looks pretty solid for Brown, but he threw just 34% of his four-seamers in the strike zone and just 18% of his sinkers – and those are supposed to be the easy pitches to command. Brown has walked four or more in three straight starts and has a 16.4% walk rate in six starts since coming back. Brown might figure this out and right the ship in his next start, but you certainly can't count on it at this point. I'm sitting Brown until he shows it.
Gavin Williams is different – and he's as frustrating as ever
For three years, Williams' biggest issue was that he issued too many walks. He limited damage on contact well enough and missed enough bats, but his inability to limit free passes proved to be a thorn in his side. Now that he has cut the walk rate to 7.6% – a legitimately good mark! – and pumped his strikeout rate up to a career-high 29.9% … of course, he's just getting absolutely crushed. Williams struck out 11 for the second start in a row Saturday but was tagged for five runs in six innings on three homers and has now allowed 20 longballs on the season, three shy of last year's career high in 48.1 fewer innings. And it's not just bad luck – Williams has gone from an average-ish .374 expected wOBA on contact to a .427 mark this season, by far the worst mark among starters. Strikeout and walk rates stabilize a lot quicker than quality of contact metrics do, so the play here might be to bet on the improvements outweighing the deficiencies in the long run. But I think Williams is just an inherently flawed pitcher who will always have to make these kinds of tradeoffs. That doesn't mean he isn't useful for Fantasy, but I think it probably means he'll always be frustrating.
Gage Jump is having problems at home
I was excited when Jump got called up, and I was really excited when he started to miss bats, ultimately declaring him a must-roster pitcher after he put up a 2.31 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 35 innings in the month of June. Things have taken a turn over the past four starts, however, and he has now given up 14 runs in 17 innings in that span. He's still missing a healthy number of bats (21 strikes in 17 innings), while his walk rate has gotten worse, it isn't prohibitively high with seven in those 17 innings. But I also don't think it's a coincidence that three of the four starts – all three poor ones – have come at Jump's home ballpark in Sacramento. He's struggling to limit damage on contact and has allowed four homers in 10.1 innings across those three home starts. I'm not going to give up on Jump, but I do think it's at least fair to declare him matchup and especially ballpark-dependent, limiting his usage to the right situations away from home. I would probably be willing to roll the dice on Jump Wednesday in Arizona, but I recognize that's a risky decision to make if you are trying to protect your ratios.
Extra Innings
Logan Henderson had another injury scare
He said it's just a cramp, and maybe it is. Who am I to say otherwise? But given Henderson's history, it's pretty that he was visited by trainers in the fifth inning of Friday's start against the Marlins and didn't come out for the sixth inning despite throwing just 73 pitches. It was yet another good start from Henderson, because that's all he does – in 12 career starts in the majors, he has a 2.45 ERA and a 3.23 xERA to back it up. But he also missed significant time last season with a flexor strain, missed time this spring with another elbow issue, and has just generally struggled to stay on the mound despite the Brewers playing it pretty safe with his workload. I want to be excited about Henderson, because I think he's a genuinely good pitcher, but these injury scares are making it hard to have faith. I hope my concerns are misplaced.
